


darling, darling

by colectiva



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, it's not EXPLICIT per se but it definitely alludes to filthier things, so it's a very Sewell way of describing his desires, that uses flowery language to describe Nate's longing for the detective, this is a pretentious love letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:47:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28673211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colectiva/pseuds/colectiva
Summary: Eva was never meant to read the words Nate penned late one evening.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 9
Kudos: 64
Collections: A series of familiar letters





	darling, darling

**Author's Note:**

> note: I SAID this was the year of no more wips, but here i am. Clownery. Anyway, some context: I wrote this with an emotionally reserved detective in mind. One who would not boldly pursue Nate, but doesn’t ever thwart his courting. Very slowburn-100k-words-energy if you will. I’m thinking this takes place sometime before the end of book 2, so there’s been no kiss.  
> barely, edited, we die like men etc.

**Neat.**

It’s the first thing she notices about his handwriting.

Long, regal, inky slopes.

It’s intimate, she decides, eyes tracing over skillful lines.

The thought occurs to her as she takes in sentence after sentence from the stack of research and notes he carefully prepared for her. Always clear, concise, coherent — patiently walking her through new information he thinks could prove useful.

He takes his time — she can tell — with every looping ‘ _l_ ’, the precise scratch of the ‘ _t’,_ the thoughtfully dotted ‘ _i’_ s.

She pictures him, all height and limbs, bowing over a mahogany desk— something lavish and presidential he picked out for himself. With drawers and more drawers and ornate gold embellishments.

Like a studious apprentice, a blacksmith and their trade — brow furrowed and ink-stained fingers, dutiful and adept with every decisive stroke he creates.

It wasn’t always this easy. 

She hadn’t immediately taken to the sharp edges of his letters. Over time (and over many _many_ sheets of paper) she grew used to the language of his hands, his fingers.

Her eyes (and much like Eva’s approach to everything) were reluctant to learn but, gradually, slowly, she let him in. And now, the once foreign and difficult to discern symbols are a consistent comfort after arduous shifts.

Eva discovers _it_ in the usual heap of study material he drops off late one afternoon.

He repeatedly apologises for his tardiness, but she’s too caught up with work to greet him properly. Busy taking a call via landline and struggling with the filing cabinet, she waves a quick _hello_ and _thank you_ and _bye for now_.

When Eva finds it...when she stumbles across it... she’s shuffling through the pages that await her attention after she logs off for the night.

And although it’s _her_ name in three distinguishable shapes, she knows she was never meant to read those neat, clean, intimate— swooping, curling letters... _not like this_.

But when she starts, she can’t stop.

 **_Eva_ ** **,**

I no longer know sleep.

Instead, the only comfort I find is writing to you in the quiet hours of the night, in the moments my mind calls the memory of the soft lines of your face.

And when sleep comes to me, in my dreams I do not find peace — for you are always there. Waiting for me, beckoning me into a fevered-vision of skin and skin and skin. 

While the world sleeps and my restless thoughts are filled with you...I wonder...how do you sleep, beloved Eva?

Lying on your side? 

And, if so, where do your hands rest…are they warm enough?

Are you keeping company tonight? 

Because in these dreams, the ones where you find me willing and brimming with promise, it’s me that occupies the empty spaces of your home. And when I wake, there’s this hope I cannot shake, a hope that leaves me guessing. 

If I knocked on your door, would you let me in? 

Would you let me in, Eva?

Eva.

Your name. I have tested it in the silence of my room. So it may be the only thing to truly inhabit these walls—alone— with me...and carved out of the breath I drew from inside— where you reside, where I cannot uproot you from.

Your name. An echo in this unassuming space, suddenly dispensing solitude with just three letters.

Sometimes, the taste lingers, and it is as sweet as the crisp and honeyed offering from your namesake. 

From your hands, I would take the ripe, supple scarlet into my pleading mouth, and from your fingers I would drink the traces of its nectar.

But it is your mouth I seek, its warmth I imagine.

Although I have never met it with mine— or with a hand, or a cheek. I have studied its roseate tones, pink as the early summer peonies, sun-worn by cloudless afternoons.

To be the aubade that lands on the slopes of your mouth, your lips— its seam. 

In my mind’s eyes, I entertain the notion of their heat, their graze. Always warm and rich, and if they were to part and allow me to indulge— your taste is mulled wine, dizzying the deeper I drink from it. 

Does my name ever slip past those lips in the stillness of your home? Have you ever tested its weight against them? 

To be the air rushing past them in a cry, a plea, a hushed and saccharine declaration. 

And while I do feel this draw between us— a thing that demands to be named, but slinks back in the shadows at your presence— I fear you might not return my affections in the same fervor.

Am I alone in this intensity of longing, hell-bent in its ambition to bring me to my knees, that I fear it might take me under and make me its eternal, loyal steward?

I have hoped, on the days when I cannot evade melancholy’s grip, you too might feel its voracious pull.

I cannot deny, darling, darling Eva, that I feel it in the awakening heat of your skin, hear it in the tripping of your heart, smell it in the carnal scent of you.

Earthier and sweeter the longer I spend my time wrapping you up in my attentions, serving you words of devotion that later leave _my_ blood running molten in my veins.

I have heard the sound of your provenance, of your heart, and I can never be the same again.

Treasured Eva, with these breaths that you take from me— that I no longer necessitate— if I could fill you with them instead, because what use is an eternity if I am only to live a half-life, cloaked in the penumbra of doubt. 

I cling to your every phrase, wondering if their true meaning may have eluded me while I found myself engrossed by the pitch of your laughter or the pleasant brush of your palm.

Because it is everything about you that I have grown to be consumed by— down to the pearly edges of your teeth.

I have memorised the shape of your hands, your almond-shaped fingernails, and I have spent too many hours wondering how their delicate tips would feel like in between the gentle press of my teeth.

Crescent moon ridges, unwittingly biting into skin. 

Dearest Eva, tell me how is it possible that I have never had you, and neither you me, but every bit of me aches to remember you? How can _want_ alone summon a deceiving memory of the slopes and curves and movements of your body? 

I poise myself as some gentleman, but I am nothing more than a scoundrel, a farce, a man who has spent too long envisioning your deserted office, your apartment. 

Thoughts of your desk, the plush chair in your reading nook, the shelves bracing orderly spines of weathered paperbacks.

Thoughts that have drifted to the ladder in the library, where I have watched you descend, hand curled around wooden rungs.

I want to test its limits with you. Away from prying eyes and among the leather-bound tomes, and witness your grip turn merciless, mouth stretching around the words I’ve only heard in frenzied daydreams.

I long to know the volumes of your unbridled desire. Your voice, always so light and gracious, like the humming pause of bygone ceremonials— reverberating, echoing. 

Could its sound come to reach new heights? 

I want it to. I want to be the one to chart its course. 

And from your supplications, could everyone come to know that you are mine, and mine alone, and I’m ever more in the servitude of your whims, endlessly marvelling at every shake, every quiver, every flutter?

Let me draw out your pleasure until you are shrouded in nothing but your ache for me.

Let me unpiece you.

Let me take you apart.

I would be selfish with you, I do not contest the fact... for you to know nothing but _want_ and _greed_ and _ardency_. 

Tell me, darling, darling, Eva. 

Do you sigh when you are kissed?

Do you endure the shivers that threaten to overrun svelte skin?

Do you draw your lips together and subdue— deprive me— of the noises I most long to hear?

Or is it the contrary?

I want to know.

Would you beg?

Would you sink your fingers into my sheets, twisted so tightly they turn white?

Would mine have to intervene — slip between the spaces and quell your overrun eagerness?

Would you still ask for more?

Even as you climb higher and higher, taking me with you. 

What crude curses might you whisper, might you sob into my chest, might you brand me with?

What obscene verses would you instruct me to sing?

Are you impatient?

Are you gentle?

Are you a lover that takes her time before unraveling a veritable _you_ , wild and untamed, like a forest turned inferno?

Will you blaze everything in your path...could you burn me, if I asked you to?

Or will you bid me the faintest spark and watch me smoulder to a height, flames crawling through landscapes, hungry, searching, licking up bark, snapping branches and collapsing timber. 

A fire so painful, so devouring, it sears and burns, reduces me to blistering, sweltering flesh, well into the early hours of the morning, nourished solely by the salt of your skin— living and dying by the heat of your thighs. 

Because there would be no greater joy than to die a sweet death by their hold, their pressure, their inescapable tension.

And if your love is a perilous blaze, mark me with its coals.

Until this animalistic and primal want renders poetry to paper useless, and I am a pitiful mess of need, destined for ruin at the memory of your quiet, stolen glances and the warmth of your skin— where all honourable expressions escape me, and all I can think of is how it is your sweet body I long to _fuck—_

“ _I’m so sorry_ —”

And then his voice.

His actual voice. 

The sweet, breathy whispers she's dreamt up the further into the letter she delves.

In the back of her mind (the part that’s still muddled and hazy from prose) there’s a misplaced sense of vindication to know she’s right— that the inner workings of her imagination have somehow fleshed out the tone of his voice...new, low and gravelly. 

She likes it.

The slamming of her heart is noisy, and almost painful in her chest, feeling its vibrations in her throat, rendering her tongue-tied when she looks up and her eyes meet warm brown ones. It only amplifies at the reminder that he knows, he hears it— _he’s always heard it._

“—I’m so sorry— that— that’s not,” he stops himself just short of her office doorway, as if terrified to overstep, as if knowing he might’ve already.

She stares at him, doing a terrible job at masking her surprise. Her fingers easily give her away, wrinkling the paper with those beautiful, neat lines, and imperceptibly shaking. 

The warmth, the alluring heat she welcomed while reading the letter, has turned on her. Instead, a flood embarrassment, the sudden understanding she’s intruded on something deeply personal. Something raw and private...a soupçon, a peek into his soul— a tender part of him, involving _her_.

He’s wide-eyed, grappling to find the right words. Eva doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this stumped, opening and closing this mouth— a mouth that has called _her_ name in the silence of his bedroom. 

“You weren’t supposed to read that.”

He looks chastised, unsure of where to look. Should he level her an apologetic frown out of respect? Or should he drop his eyes to the floor, bow his head in shame?

Nate rakes an uneasy hand through wind-tousled hair (he must have run here) and that’s when she takes note of his other hand, clutching onto more papers. 

“Are those the missing pages?” She doesn’t know where she plucks the courage to ask through the thick tension settling in her office.

A flicker of confusion passes through his handsome, kind face before he follows her eye line.

“ _Oh_ -oh _,_ yes.”

Hesitant at first, he takes a tentative step forward, and when she doesn’t object, he moves towards her until he’s close enough to remind her how _tall he really is_ . She is _nothing_ in comparison to his presence.

The thought sends a thrill down Eva’s spine. 

Hyperaware that he might sense this pathetic reaction, she chances a cautious glance at him only to find his eyes shut, and his throat working in what appears to be an attempt to collect himself.

Nate takes a second before opening his eyes, trying in vain to suck in a calming deep breath. An anxious hand extends the missing pages to her. 

Eva swallows nervously, tears her eyes away from his, and takes them. But she has no choice but to focus on his strong hands. Focus on the long, slender fingers that crafted _those words_.

And when she looks up at him again, gaze settling on his lips, the blood rushes in her ears and her heart stirs up a raucous beat. 

Instinctively, she takes a step back and the hard edge of her loafer meets the desk. It’s quiet, the soft, hollow tap it makes, but it’s deafening in their ears.

 _Her desk_.

She quickly thrusts towards him the three pages, acutely mindful they’ve been in her sweating grip this entire time. He takes them back at an eye-watering speed, rolling them into a tight scroll as if trying to make them disappear by sheer willpower. 

A tense silence follows, one she’s not too happy with. Not when her heart must be the loudest thing in the room for both of them.

“Please, detective Gonzalez,” Nate begins and he sounds out of breath, a pleading edge to his voice. He runs his hand through his hair again, a little more desperately. “I—I don’t know what to say except that I’m terribly sorry, and _mortified_. You have to know I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. Please, if you could find it in yourself to forgive my indiscretion. You were never meant to read— I mixed up the papers on my desk, I was already running late for the drop-off—”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she interrupts and tries to even her tone as business-as-usual, but she remembers... _humming pause of bygone ceremonials_.

Eva clears her throat, wondering if she can shed its quality, and prevent the ruthless fevered flush from spreading. She brings her attention to the new pages in front of her, shuffling through the notes about some magical plant she can’t sound out its pronunciation just yet.

“Consider it forgotten,” Eva turns her back to him and busies herself with— well, she doesn't know what, really. Her mind is miles away, partly anchored by the gaze she can feel on her neck. For all she knows, she might be making a bigger mess on her desk. 

When Eva doesn’t turn around again, or makes to address his presence (mostly out of the fear of what she might do), she hears the sound of his boots retreating.

“Right,” his response is quiet. Yes, definitely closer to the door now. “I’ll...uh—leave you to it, then. Sorry— once again, _just—_ sorry, detective.”

She pushes her glasses further up her nose, hands crying out to find something to do, shaking a little more noticeable this time. They settle on her hips, then on each opposite arm as she crosses them over her chest, and then finally slicking back her hair.

He has to know.

He has to know, _right_?

She’s never spelled it out for him before...that she— she feels— well, _what she feels is_ —

“Nate,” Eva calls out urgently, turning around to face him. He stops dead in his tracks right before crossing the threshold. 

She’s never been as eloquent as him. Eva couldn’t begin to construct half the phrases he’s managed to string together, describing _everything_ she’s been fighting to make sense of these last few months.

Nate frowns at her silence. “Detective Gonzalez?”

 _Yes_.

Is what she wants to say.

 _Yes_ , she longs for him too.

 _Yes_ , she has also memorised the ridges of his teeth.

 _Yes_ , come fill the spaces of her empty, empty home.

Instead, the words her mouth form are: “Thank you for— for the notes. I’ll read them tonight.”

His brow furrows quizzically and uncertainty lines his features. He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it. Nate offers Eva a brief nod before casting his eyes back down to the ground.

Then he leaves, and she watches his outline for as long as she can, broad shoulders and imposing height before he disappears round the corner of the foyer. 

And with his absence all around her (fingers daring to trace the lines of his writing and secretly wishing she held onto that last page), Eva wonders:

_How many more letters have there been?_

**Author's Note:**

> Note II: Can I just bare my soul for a second and say 1.) it is incredibly intimidating to write for a character as smart as N but so so fun and 2.) how intimidating it is to write in this fandom from the sheer talent that already exists.  
> There was a ton of water imagery stuff I had to take out because it just didn’t feel very true to N’s character, ya know...water and storms and all. So, fire it is!  
> And yes, when I decided on the name Eva I had a lil swoon knowing N would know how to pronounce it with its intended Spanish inflection.


End file.
